The mission of the Helmet Replacement Initiative is to promote safer football helmets

This past spring, the NFL announced a youth football Helmet Replacement Initiative as a measure to promote safety.

The program began this summer in four "underserved communities," including the New Orleans area as part of the Gulf Coast region, where helmets 10 years old or older were targeted and replaced with new helmets. The initiative will provide about 13,000 helmets to youth teams in the Bay Area in California, Northern Ohio, New York City and the Gulf Coast.

"Chairman Inez Tenenbaum saw that there needed to be a culture change in youth football," said Scott Wolfson, director of communications at the CSPC. "There tended to be a misunderstanding by parents and even by youth players as to the role of the helmet."

Jimmy Gibson, president of the Bayou Teche Football League, a youth league in Baldwin that is participating in the program, said he found out about the initiative through the website of USA Football, a youth football governing body. He said he has always looked for programs that will help his league, especially in tough economic times.

"We have helmets that are old, and we do fund-raisers now to try to get them refurbished," he said. "When you're looking at council members and mayors and different areas, they don't seem like they have a lot of money to spend on our youth, so we try to do what we can do to get this stuff."

The helmets are provided at no cost to the teams participating in the program. The NFL, NFLPA, NCAA and National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment have all combined to contribute approximately $1 million for the first year of the program.

Another area league that has received helmets as a part of the program is Louisiana Youth Football, based in Baton Rouge.

"A lot of our teams actually had those helmets that were 10 years old or older because they couldn't afford to get new helmets," league director Leroy Hollins said. "They were trying to work with the budget they had to clean up the helmets but it really wasn't truly certified, so this was a great opportunity to get those out of rotation here in our program."

Teams receiving new helmets may choose to have their replacement helmets manufactured by Rawlings, Riddell, Schutt or Zenith.

Hollins said his program had about 120 helmets that were 10 years old or older, including some that were from 1998. As part of the initiative, the National Athletic Equipment Reconditioning Association will no longer recertify any helmet that is older than 10 years.

For the coaches, figuring out which helmets are older than 10 years isn't an easy task, though.

"This is something that the industry is really working on Ñ how we can properly track helmets," USA Football Executive Director Scott Hallenback said. "They're starting to look at the research to understand at what point do we start to see degradation of helmets, and it might vary based on who's wearing the helmet. If you're a lineman, you might see it more quickly than, say, if you're a quarterback."

Looks can be deceiving.

Hollins said he thought some helmets were new but turned out to be old, and some of the helmets he and his staff believed to be old were, in fact, only a couple of years old.

NOSCAE Executive Director Mike Oliver has been maintaining a database of the helmets as they are submitted for inspections.

"We have a little over 1,000 helmets that have been evaluated so far," he said. "There are a lot more that are in the process. Of the 1,000 helmets Ñ these are all from youth leagues Ñ the average age of the helmets is 15 years. The oldest that we've seen is 25."

While the average age of those helmets might seem alarmingly high, Oliver said many teams have had their helmets refurbished somewhat recently.

"The average years since the helmet was last reconditioned is only three years," he said. "It looks like youth clubs are doing a pretty good job of having their equipment regularly maintained, but you do find a lot of older helmets at the youth level."

The NOSCAE is collecting the helmets each program has turned in for research in hopes of improving the safety of future helmets.

Dr. Aaron Karlin serves as director of Ochsner's Concussion Management Program and provides concussion testing and treatment to thousands of high school students in St. Tammany Parish and Jefferson Parish. According to Karlin, helmets can prevent skull fractures and facial injuries, but there's no such thing as a "concussion-proof helmet."

"If you take a raw egg and you shake it hard enough, you can break the yoke without breaking the shell Ñ and the same thing is true about your brain," he said. "That being said, helmets that are in disrepair and aren't adequately refurbished can certainly perform less well and allow for greater transmission of force to the head and increase your risk of skull fracture and possibly concussion."

But the program isn't just about giving youth football leagues safer equipment. One of the main aspects of the initiative is the importance of coach, player, parent and official education in an effort to make football safer.

"You can put the fanciest equipment on it, but if I don't know how to drive a Cadillac or a Porsche, it doesn't do me any good," Hollins said. "I mean if I have a Porsche engine but I don't know how to fix it, I might as well be driving a tank. The education side of it helps us be able to utilize the equipment. It's a hand-in-hand process."

Lately, education has become an important part of concussion prevention. Last year, the Louisiana Youth Concussion Act was signed into law. The law outlines specific guidelines so those involved in youth football understand the symptoms of a concussion as well as the proper procedure for treatment of those symptoms. It also makes sure young athletes get proper medical clearance before returning to the field.

The Helmet Replacement Initiative focuses on youth football in part because research has shown that concussions at a young age can cause players to be more susceptible to head trauma and its negative effects later on.

"One hit to the head should be taken seriously in terms of the impact it can have on the quality and health and safety of that player down the line," Wolfson said.